


At Last

by Winterstar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagining a reunion between Steve and Peggy – their last dance together</p><p> <i>When he first walks in and sees her, he stops in the doorway of her room in the retirement home. The light throws his shadow in a long stretch over her chair and she looks up from the book on her lap to meet his gaze. Her features are tooled and she never shows surprise.</i></p><p>  <i>Instead, she raises an eyebrow and says to him, “You’re late.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	At Last

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize, I had to write this- why I don't know.

When he first walks in and sees her, he stops in the doorway of her room in the retirement home. The light throws his shadow in a long stretch over her chair and she looks up from the book on her lap to meet his gaze. Her features are tooled and she never shows surprise.

Instead, she raises an eyebrow and says to him, “You’re late.”

He offers her a small hurt smile but says, “I got caught up.” He pauses. “I fell asleep.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.” She folds her hand on the book and peers up at him. She still has the most luminous eyes he’s ever seen. Her lips are full and beautiful and that wicked brilliance remains under the age of her features. He loves her all the more for her strength, for not falling apart on him at this moment, for being Peggy Carter. “Well, are you going to stand around in the doorway, or are you going to be a proper gentleman, and come and say hello, Captain?”

He steps into the room. It is sharp and orderly, like he imagines she has lived her life. It aches just then to think of her – living a long life while he’d slept. Yet, there’s a small part of him that rejoices that she lived and survived and continued onward. He hopes she has been happy, is happy.

He doesn’t realize it until she points it out that he cannot look at her, that it is all too painful to know what he’s lost. 

“Oh please, don’t do that.” There’s no sympathy in her tone, but it is not unkind. Peggy never was a sentimental dame, but she was practical, pragmatic, and smart. He likes smart, he always has. 

“I-I won’t,” he says and agrees. 

She gestures to the cushioned chair next to hers. “Sit.”

He settles in the chair, trying not to say yes ma’am – almost succeeding but failing. She’s so much older than he is, now. He’s always been taught to respect his elders. 

It is Peggy, bold and brave Peggy, who breaks the silence that weighs over them like a heavy cloud. “You’ve joined the Avengers?”

“You know about them?”

“Who doesn’t? Try to hide that fact after an alien invasion is a little more difficult than keeping an offensive on the hush hush during the war.” She reaches across the table which sits between the two chairs and opens her hand to him.

Without hesitation, Steve places his hand in hers. It is so nice to say things like ‘the war’ and know the person you’re talking to refers to the same thing. She is his contemporary even if she is so much older than he is. 

He owes her so much. “I wanted to say-.”

“What? That you’re sorry? That you’re sorry for saving everyone? For risking your own life, for giving up your own life for what? A chance at a different one?” She tisks at him. “Don’t diminish your sacrifice, Steve. What you did, what you did means that Doctor Erskine was right all along.”

He nods but the words he wants to say choke him.

She squeezes his hand. “You know, I heard a lot about these Avengers. The Iron Man, Thor, you know what I think?”

He blinks and shakes his head.

“I think that they can’t possibly be the kind of hero you are,” she whispers. “You, Steve, were a hero before, before you stepped up into that chamber. You were a good man, before anything happened to you. You were the right man to be Captain America because you were a good man as Steve Rogers. That sets you apart from the others. The others had to learn a lesson and change, you-. Don’t change, Steve, don’t ever change.”

He presses his lips together because he can’t talk, he can’t say anything. He nods and his eyes sting. 

“Now, when am I going to get that dance?” Peggy asks. She withdraws her hand and puts the book on the table.

“Oh, I-.”

She pulls out a small device that looks like one of those tablets Tony is always walking around with. She fiddles with it and the music starts. She lifts her hands to him and waits. He stands bends over, and helps her to her feet. She is unsteady and so much smaller than he remembers. She leans against him, places her head against his chest as the music blossoms around them.

_At last_  
My love has come along  
My lonely days over  
And life is like a song… 

As he rocks her slowly to and fro, he feels her legs are weak and so he scoops her up and holds her, bridal style, in his arms. Her head rests on his shoulder, her arm around him, her other hand cupping his jaw, tenderly caressing the line of his cheek down to his neck.

The lyrics sing out and he breaks a little more. He feels like he might be a china tea cup with hairline fractures just waiting for the slightest sound to shatter in a burst of shards. He doesn’t want her to have been lonely and waiting for him all these years. He wants her to have been happy, to have found happiness.

As if she listens in on his fears she says, “Howard never stopped looking for you.”

“I know.”

“I did, Steve,” she says in the barest of whispers. “I stopped hoping.” 

He gazes down at her face, the lines are there to mar her beauty, to speak to all of the life she has lived, and everything he has missed. “I’m glad. I never wanted you to wait for me.”

“I would have, if I’d known.”

“I’m glad you didn’t know,” Steve says and he thinks of the years spent in his ice prison, the long cold, the moments as the plane crashed and the pain and fear. “I didn’t want you to wait.”

“I didn’t, you know, I went on and lived my life,” she says as if in apology.

“Good,” he says and he wants her to believe it. He wants her to know that he only wanted her to be happy, to not pine away all her long and beautiful youth for him, a dead man in the ice. “I wanted you to dance, Peggy, not wait.”

“At least, my last dance is with you.”

_Oh, and then the spell was cast_  
And here we are in heaven  
For you are mine  
At last 

The song winds down but Steve holds on, he keeps her in his arms and cradles her until the sun drifts farther in the sky toward the horizon. He waits until she sleeps and he places her gently in the bed. Her eyes closed and, at rest, he can still see the hints of beauty across her cheek, her full lips. He leans down and places a chaste kiss on her lips, remembering the last time he kissed her, the last moments before the ice consumed him, before his life paused and hers continued onward. He covers her gently with a blanket from the foot of the bed.

He steps away but does not leave until he peers over his shoulder and sees her smile in her sleep.

THE END

Lyrics are from [At Last](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Last) by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, 1941. In 1960, it was a cover by Etta James, the most famous version of the song.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for spending part of your day with me. Kudos to you.


End file.
